18 September 2023
In the fourth of our five-part blog series, we speak to Dr. Spencer Ellis, consultant physician and rheumatologist, Dr. Ei Ei Phyu Htut, consultant rheumatologist and Dr. Peter Bale, consultant paediatric rheumatologist. They discuss our infamous two-day core skills course and why it’s essential for new and experienced delegates to join.
How did this course come about? Why is this course an important part of the BSR education programme?
The core skills course has been around for a long time, I completed the course when I was a trainee and found it very useful. It’s been a fundamental part of the education committee output for many years and is aimed at delivering critical elements of the rheumatology curriculum for specialist registrars. The course is also one of the approved college courses for study leave for rheumatology high-specialist training.
We’ve changed the nature of core skills from doctor-facing lectures and sessions to one that covers our wider MDT steam. Our current course has a stream for AHPs, paediatric and higher specialist trainees and consultants who are interested in a refresher. We deliver topics that appeal to the whole group of people attending.
Who is it for? Why should they attend?
The course provides an educational foundation for the core skills needed in a rheumatology specialist trainee. Other interested parties may be final-year medical students and early years juniors’ trainees. This applies across the paediatric stream, and there’s a wide variety of allied healthcare professionals ranging from pharmacists, specialist nurses, occupational therapists, and physiotherapists across the MDT stream.
We ensure we are keeping up to date on an annual basis by reviewing guidelines and ensuring that we are covering the topics with keynote speeches. Year by year we will change the slant of the objective so we're looking at different aspects within the specialist topics.
It gives you everything in a very short space of time to really give you that basic foundation of knowledge, which will help you hopefully understand the running of clinics, and meetings, and then also give you the stimulus to learn more, particularly in the areas that you're most interested in.
Why are the topics featured in the programme important?
We base our programme on curriculum requirements, the course was originally built around the rheumatology curriculum for higher specialist training. It focuses on topics that are in that curriculum, but we also look at organ-specific interactions with rheumatological diseases.
Topic-wise, we try to have something that focuses on non-clinical skills and hot new areas of development. We try and keep things fresh by changing the teaching format, so we have some sessions that are delivered by a whole multidisciplinary team.
What are the highlights of the day?
Hector Chinoy is a wonderful speaker and his session on myositis is a real highlight as well as the Spondylarthritis MDT session. Some highlights would include the keynote speeches, but also the interactivity between the delegates, our speakers, and chairs.
Even though the course is in a virtual setting, it's worked well by having an interactive virtual platform with voting polls and teasers from the speakers for specific learning points as well as the interactivity within the Q&A segments.
There are also interesting questions generated by audience members and delegates and each time I do the course, even as a chair or a consultant, you're learning something new across different streams and across a variety of topics.
What will they learn? How will it improve their clinical practice? How will it improve their career?
From medical students to foundation year trainees and across the whole MDT, this course will help plant the seed in terms of potentially developing a rheumatology career. We believe that this will give them the clinical skills and knowledge and provide them with a broad overview of MDT working that is consistent throughout the programme and over the two-day course.
If you could summarise this course in few words, what would it be?
This is a fun and exciting course that demonstrates rheumatology as a specialty and highlights the multidisciplinary working of our specialty.
It's a fantastic opportunity to gain access to leading national experts, to help you clarify your learning and promote your future development. It's the rheumatology course you can't live without!